Ridley Scott. Cormac McCarthy. Michael Fassbender. Penélope Cruz. Javier Bardem. Brad Pitt. Cameron Diaz. With such an impressive roster of talent involved, you might think that "The Counselor" would be a slam dunk, sure to captivate audiences and rack up the Oscars come March. It's all the more shocking, then, that in reality "The Counselor" is the most tone deaf misfire of the year and a complete embarrassment for all involved.
Ridley Scott, the man behind such classics as "Blade Runner", "Alien", and "Black Hawk Down" is undeniably a terrific director. And every moviegoer knows that the entire cast is capable of turning in an exceptional performance. So where did the film go so disastrously wrong? Sadly, almost all of the blame lies squarely on the shoulders of screenwriter Cormac McCarthy.
McCarthy is one of the most acclaimed American authors of his generation; his novels are compelling and violent modern-day westerns full of complex characters holding on to their humanity by the skin of their teeth. Some of his works have previously been adapted into films (most notably the Best Picture-winning "No Country For Old Men"), but this is the first time McCarthy himself has penned an original screenplay. Unfortunately, it seems that McCarthy should have stuck to books and let other people adapt them to film, because he doesn't seem to understand that they're two entirely different artistic mediums.
Dialogue that may seem beautifully poetic on the written page sounds farcical when spoken aloud. Even the best actor would struggle to sell lines like "Guilt transcends value" or "Truth has no temperature" (the latter sounds ludicrous in the mouth of Diaz). While the Coen Brothers wisely pared down McCarthy's florid dialogue for their "No Country" screenplay in favor of economic storytelling and tense silences, here McCarthy is given free rein and goes absolutely exposition-crazy. The characters all speak in inane platitudes, serving as empty mouthpieces for whatever uninspired story about greed McCarthy wants to tell. As such, all the dialogue sounds like the philosophical ramblings of one man rather than real conversations between people with unique personalities or viewpoints.
Even the sudden and shocking spurts of violence that McCarthy is famous for are bland here. Every violent moment is heavily foreshadowed or telegraphed ahead of time, sucking any suspense out of the film and rendering all of the very few action scenes disappointingly flaccid. What little plot exists in this jumbled mess revolves around a drug deal that is drawn in the vaguest possible terms, with double-crossing and backstabbing that is never explained. The entire heist is carried out by anonymous extras in scenes completely separate from the rest of the movie, while the main cast wanders aimlessly through disconnected vignettes that lead nowhere. Not one character changes, several die, and then the movie ends. That's pretty much it. Even Fassbender's nameless Counselor is a one-note protagonist -- he is not a good man who gets in over his head and then struggles with the moral dilemma of what he's done, but a boring man who gets in over his head and then walks around crying about it.
Fassbender, with his chiseled face and brooding gravitas, does his best, but the Counselor is too passive to be even remotely interesting. Javier Bardem, who played a memorable villain in "No Country" as the cattle-gun-wielding, bad-haircut-sporting Anton Chigurh, here is confined to a mere caricature. His drug lord, Reiner, with pumpkin-orange skin and spiky hair, could easily be mistaken for a "Dragon Ball Z" cartoon character. Penélope Cruz is completely wasted as the Counselor's lovely but personality-free fiancée. Brad Pitt is easily the most interesting person on the screen as middleman Westray. In his scant screen time, Pitt manages to do what no one else in the film could: namely, turn a one-dimensional sketch into a fully fleshed-out portrait. Even though we're given very little backstory on Westray, Pitt plays him as a man with a history, and as such he's the only actor who doesn't seem to have just wandered accidentally onto a movie set.
And then there's Cameron Diaz. As Malkina, the scheming, titanium-fingernailed, cheetah-spot-tattooed girlfriend of Reiner, Ms. Diaz is all but guaranteed to earn a permanent spot on many "Worst Miscastings Ever" lists. Malkina easily could have been the most intriguing character in the film -- and, presumably, on the page she made a compelling villain. But as portrayed by the wooden Diaz, she's a complete travesty. Granted, this is only half her fault: McCarthy doesn't do her any favors. Indeed, poor Ms. Diaz is saddled with one of the most bizarre scenes in recent memory, which involves her masturbating on the windshield of a car. It's obscene, misogynistic, and utterly unnecessary; and yet Diaz attacks the scene with complete commitment, as though she thinks this humiliation will make her character interesting.
Perhaps the person who comes out of "The Counselor" the most unscathed is Ridley Scott. The film is gorgeous to look at and he directs it with an understated intensity. It's too bad that the beautiful images are wasted on the superfluous materialism of the film's poorly-drawn characters, and that the deliberate pace he evokes is undermined at every turn by McCarthy's inept screenplay. Ridley Scott and his impressive cast of talented actors should be granted a second chance to work together. Given better material, this team could have delivered a knockout -- which only makes the end result of "The Counselor" even more disappointing, and an arduously painful film that must be endured rather than enjoyed.
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ML50I0mVHY[/youtube]
